Neuron Culture’s Best of Year

I resist best-of-year roundups when I see the heads — but then find I usually like reading them, and lo and behold, find it instructive to do my own. While most of my attention last year went into pitching and then beginning work on The Orchid and the Dandelion, I spent a lot of time in Neuron Culture exploring other issues as well. A look back reveals some abiding interests amid my distractability: behavioral genetics; reading and writing; calling bullshit on bad media; how depression works and what it is; and the big transition in the science blogosphere sparked by Pepsigate.

I’ve pulled my own choice of Top 10 up top here, for those who want the short list approach. Same entries are also embedded in the chrono list further down.

TOP TEN NEURON CULTURE POSTS OF 2010

The depression map: genes, culture, serotonin, and a side of pathogens The most substantive post of the year, the one most relevant to the book I’m writing, and the most novel and powerful idea I blogged about this year. If the depression risk gene heightens risk for depression, how come the populations who carry that gene at the highest rates have the lowest rates of depression? A really juicy look at what we mean by “environment.”

The Bright Side of the “Depression-Risk Gene” “The reclamation of the ‘depression gene’ proceeds apace, as a leading researcher on the Gene Formerly Known as the Depression Gene — that is, the short allele of the serotonin transporter gene — reviews the evidence for the advantages it confers.

More metamedia: Malcolm Gladwell: Twitter, You’re No Martin Luther King. I had forgotten this one until I looked back to do this round up. This was my smack at Malcolm Gladwell for his article about limits of twitter. Fun in its own right, and nice to because a version of this ended up in the Atlantic’s tech blog, run by Alexis Madrigal. I consider that tech blog, incidentally, one of the most exciting things that has happened in the blogosphere this year. Madrigal had done great stuff writing at Wired Science, and he has simply exploded with creative ideas and great work at the Atlantic. It’s a lovely thing to see.

The mojo of open journalism, plus that itchy beta thing. My take on the first “Rebooting Science Journalism” session, held at ScienceOnline 2010. I also like the photo at the top of this post, because it looks as if I’m either a) hynotizing Carl Zimmer or b) just putting him to sleep.

February

Comes a Time for Neil Young. How I love this guy. Here Neil, who sometimes looks grumpy at all the stupidity that goes with being a music star, looks like he’s having a good time, and he’s so young and so beautiful and strong, and just LISTEN to him sing that out with Nicollete Larson. Now he’s old, sort of, and beautiful and strong, and he just keeps doing it. Long may he run.

Does depression have an upside? It’s complicated. One of my favorite posts of the year. I was trying to respond to some slippery questions raised by Jonah Lehrer’s New York Times Magazine story on whether depression is adaptive from an evolutionary perspective. Tricky work, but I felt I got across what I wanted to here, and it’s important stuff.

The depression map: genes, culture, serotonin, and a side of pathogens The most substantive post of the year, the one most relevant to the book I’m writing, and at once the most novel and powerful idea I wrote about. If the depression risk gene heightens risk for depression, how come the populations who carry that gene at the highest rates have the lowest rates of depression? A really juicy look at what we mean by “environment.”

Is page reading different from screen reading? I think about this subject a LOT but write on it seldom; with luck some of the thinking came across here. As someone on Twitter noted, this turned out to be as much about writing on paper versus screen as it was about reading.

Malcolm Gladwell: Twitter, You’re No Martin Luther King. I had forgotten this one until I looked back to do this round up. This was my smack at Malcolm Gladwell for his article about limits of twitter. Fun in its own right, and nice to because a version of this ended up in the Atlantic’s tech blog, run by Alexis Madrigal. I consider that tech blog, incidentally, one of the most exciting things that has happened in the blogosphere this year. Madrigal had done great stuff writing at Wired Science, and he has simply exploded with creative ideas and great work at the Atlantic. It’s a lovely thing to see.

Special Virtual Month for Marc Hauser

The Marc Hauser scandal broke in August and ran rampant into September. I jumped on this story right away because overreach fascinates me, and because the scandal it involves so many factors that make science a fascinating study of how people work — but sometimes not in the way the researchers set out to show. Those in bold here are the most substantial and comprehensive posts.

The Hauser story has remained remarkably quiet since then, because everyone’s holding their cards close for legal reasons. But it will emerge again, I suspect, and stand for years as a rich case study in how difficulties of technique and method can intersect with the perils of temptation to lead to serious trouble.

How to Set the Bullshit Filter When the Bullshit is Thick More metamedia. Much attention paid this year to the question of how reliable scientific results are. This piece considers how science writers might adjust their approach to account for this kind of uncertainty. I rather like this post.